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Going For The Gold 7.27.97
Five more murders last night, makes twelve in five days. One of the murders happened right across the street from Harold Armour's bar in the Seventh Ward. Harold is the Neighborhood Watch cop for this district. Phillis was over this evening giving Mandy some Night Out Against Crime paraphenalia. Party over at Mama D's in a couple of weeks. Barbecue chicken, and whiskey, maybe deviled eggs. Anyway, Phillis said Harold heard the shots and when he went outside there was no one there--except for this young man lying on the sidewalk with the top half of his head missing. Last time there were this many murders in one week, the citizens marched on City Hall. I went with down with Mandy and Phillis. My brother, Alex, was in town and he came too. Our smarmy mayor had set up an image control team outside on the grounds. Had a stage, some inspirational speakers, maybe even a little gospel music. Then we all rushed for the chambers. Again, the mayor had the fix in and the chamber was filled mostly with city employees and lackeys. But there were enough piss off screaming citizens that it was quite a show to behold. The mayor never did show up though. Safety concerns. Unlike this week, that week's murder count included three white people (employees of the Pizza Kitchen in the Quarter. The young killers used potatoes for silencers on their guns). This week, as the boys at work might say, is just a bunch of niggers killing niggers. Punks and gangsters who aren't productive members of society so fuck 'em. This is our last favor to the young urban black as a society. To let them die without too much fuss. We have not been able to help them without making them weaker, we are not educating them, and we can't relate to them as being anything but a problem. It's the least we can do really, to let them die quietly, to let the young bad boys kill each other off, to accept their demise as an efficiency, not to disgrace them with our concern after the fact.
Monk's wife would not respond to calls from her sister today so her sister called emergency services and they busted the door down. His wife had been living with cancer for awhile and it killed her today.
It's ten o'clock Friday night and The Magnolia closes at eight so I walked over to Kim's on N. Broad, near the corner of St. Ann. I wanted a 22-ounce Heineken. Monk was standing in front of the iron gates that Kim puts up late at night. I gave him a feeble wave as I approached. We shook hands and he told me what I already knew and I told him how sorry I was. He had a lot of gin in him and he was looking for more. He had been married for 33 years. He walked off with a man I didn't recognize in search of something I cannot imagine.
Happiness is the absence of intellectual thought.
Saturday: Three more dead last night but one of those might be a repeat in the count so let's just say 14 in six days. One more day to go. Murder cannot continue at this pace but if it did the toll would top 600 for the year. The per capita equivalent in NYC would be 12,000. The actual count in NYC is closer to 1,200 for a year.
But overall the murder rate is down for the year, and all crime in our district is down, and the 2600 block of Dumaine is pretty quiet, so maybe I should just cheer up. There is no TV here and if I didn't read the newspaper I wouldn't even know any of this was happening. I wonder if ignorance is an option at this point?
Sunday: Some punk shot his lawyer last night and that makes fifteen.